Goshen Township seeking police chief after Snyder leaves

GOSHEN TOWNSHIP – Goshen Township trustees are interviewing candidates for police chief after long-time Chief Ray Snyder, who also served as the township’s administrator, took medical leave a month before his Nov. 30 retirement.

Two days after the Oct. 28 Goshen Township board of trustees meeting, Snyder left a doctor’s note with the police clerk concerning his medical leave, said interim administrator Claire Corcoran, who also serves as chairperson of the Goshen Township Board of Trustees. For now, Capt. Bob Rose is running the police department, and trustees are interviewing applicants for police chief, Corcoran said.

Although Snyder’s abrupt departure on medical leave prompted some to speculate he was being forced out, Corcoran said that’s not true.

“I have absolutely nothing negative to say,” Corcoran said of Goshen’s former police chief. “He served this community well. I want people to know that he was not fired, and his pay was not decreased. He had sick time on the books, and he has a right to take it.”

Last month, Corcoran’s fellow trustees appointed her interim administrator through Dec. 31, after they were unable to decide on filling the administrator’s job. Corcoran, who will receive no compensation for those duties, abstained from that vote.

“We had been talking about me serving as interim administrator for several months before that, knowing that (Snyder) was retiring and had a lot on his plate,” Corcoran said.

For now, Capt. Bob Rose is handling the daily operations of the police department, Corcoran said.

At the Nov. 10 Goshen Township Trustees meeting, resident Kyle Flynn asked if there was a better way of staffing the police department during the third shift, or overnight shift. Flynn said he called police a couple weeks ago after spotting a suspicious vehicle in his neighborhood, but no one showed up after a half hour wait.

Corcoran said trustees are aware of police department staffing issues and plan to add more officers in the new budget year that starts in January. The Goshen Township Police Department now has seven full-time police officers, two part-time officers and one auxiliary officer.

Meanwhile, the Hamilton County sheriff’s office was called in to complete the inventory of the Goshen Township police evidence room with Goshen Township Police Officer Jamie McFarland, who has been assisting Snyder in that task.

The Goshen Township Police Department’s evidence room, or property room, has been the subject of a 2-year-old investigation involving thousands of dollars of missing drug case money orders and narcotics evidence seized by police.

At the Oct. 28 trustees meeting, Snyder said the audit, or inventory of the police property room, was about 90 percent complete and he expected it could be finished in a couple of days.

Representatives of the Hamilton County sheriff’s office could not be reached by deadline for an update on the inventory of the Goshen Police Department evidence room or that agency’s investigation of the missing items.

A spokesperson for the Hamilton County sheriff’s office had said earlier that authorities with that agency hoped to have their investigation finished by the end of the year.

Want to know more about what’s happening in Goshen Township? Follow me on Twitter @CindyLSchroeder.